Erotic Passage of the Day

[Bleak&Icy]

The art of illuminating the eyelid is old and honorable, and no Court lady is without her miniaturist. These delicate and precise paintings, in black, white, red, green, and blue ink, are highly prized by our courtiers, and especially by lovers, who read in them profound and ambiguous messages. One can never be certain, when one sees a handsome courtier gazing passionately into the eyes of a beautiful lady, whether he is searching for the soul behind her eyes or whether he is striving to attain a glimpse of her elegant and dangerous eyelids. These paintings are never the same, and indeed are different for each eyelid, and one cannot know, gazing across the room at a beautiful lady with whom one has not yet become intimate, whether her lowered eyelids will reveal a tall willow with dripping branches; an arched bridge in snow; a pear blossom and hummingbird; a crane among rocks; rice leaves bending in the wind; a wall with open gate, through which can be seen a distant village on a hillside. When speaking, a Court lady will lower her eyelids many times, offering tantalizing glimpses of little scenes that seem to express the elusive mystery of her soul. The lover well knows that these eyelid miniatures, at once public and intimate, half-exposed and always hiding, allude to the secret miniatures of the hidden eyes, or the eyes of the breast. These miniature masterpieces are inked upon the rosy areola surrounding the nipple and sometimes upon the sides and tip of the nipple itself. A lover disrobing his mistress in the first ecstasy of her consent is so eager for his sight of those secret miniatures that sometimes he lingers too long in rapturous contemplation and thereby incurs severe displeasure. Some Court ladies delight in erotic miniatures of the most startling kind, and it is impossible to express the troubled excitement with which a lover, stirred to exaltation by the elegant turn of a cheekbone and the shy purity of a glance, discovers upon the breast of his beloved an exquisitely inked scene of riot and debauchery.

-- "Cathay" by Steven Millhauser

[Bleak&Icy]

On our way home we stopped at a pastry shop to get cakes. No sooner had we entered the white, icing sugar room than the night suddenly tensed up and became watchful lest we should escape. It waited for us patiently, outside the door, showing the unmoving stars through the window panes of the shop while we were inside selecting our cakes with great deliberation.

It was then that I saw Bianca for the first time. She stood sideways in front of the counter with her governess; she was slim and linear in a white dress as if she had just left the zodiac. She did not turn her head but stood with the perfect poise of a young girl, eating a cream bun. I could not see her clearly, for the zigzags of starry lines still lingered under my eyelids. It was the first time that our still confused horoscopes had crossed, met, and dissolved in indifference. We did not anticipate our fate from that early aspect of the stars, and we left the shop casually, making the glass-fronted door rattle.

-- "Spring" by Bruno Schulz (trans. Celina Wieniewska)

[Odalisque]

Erotic passage of the day? That sounds neither bleak nor icy. In fact, it seems more like work for an odalisque.

I shall think on erotic passages I might post.

[Viva June]

Is "erotic" to be distinguished from "pornographic"? After all, to paraphrase Alan Moore, whether something is considered "erotica" or "pornography" depends on the income bracket of its audience. Either way, this thread should prove very interesting.

[Ligeia]

Stick Boy and Match Girl in Love

Stick Boy liked Match Girl,

he liked her a lot.

He liked her cute figure,

he thought she was hot.

But could a flame ever burn

for a match and a stick?

It did quite literally;

he burned up pretty quick..


From Tim Burton's "The Melancholy Death of Oyster Boy and Other Stories".

[Bleak&Icy]

Before I had known her very long she even had me using her name in the most familiar way. The mere saying of this name instilled in me a sense of access to what she offered all those telephone-callers, not to mention those individuals who personally visited the art gallery to make or confirm an appointment. Whatever someone was eager to try, whatever step someone was willing to take--Dalha could arrange it. This was the true stock in trade of the art gallery, these arrangements. When I returned to the library after my lunch break, I continued to imagine Dalha back at the art gallery, racing between the front and back sections of the building, making all kinds of arrangements over the telephone, and sometimes in person.

-- "The Bungalow House" by Thomas Ligotti

(Oh, those wicked Ligottian italics!)

[Odalisque]

I was trying to explain to a female acquaintance the other day exactly what I did for a living. 'Magazine Editor' sounded fine and she began to look quite impressed, then of course, the next question had to be, 'What kind of magazine?' I took a deep breath and decided to plunge straight in, but had no idea what her reaction was likely to be.

'Um, it's a sexy magazine,' I said. This made her giggle. 'Specialising in the subject of women getting their bottoms spanked.'

This revelation did not appear to shock or disturb her in the least, instead, her face misted over in an expression of deep perplexity.

'Just that?' she asked. 'Doesn't it get rather repetitive?'

'Good heaven no!' I replied. Then I fell silent.

How could I explain in a couple of sentences the unlimited range of nuances each spanking experience can contain; the multitude of different situations, atmospheres and backgrounds, embellished by all manner of clothes, underwear or degrees of nakedness; the important words and phrases we use, and the variation of implements, each producing a different sound on impact, a different pitch of 'ooh' and 'aah' from the recipient, a different sensation on the skin, and each resultant mark ranging from a pale pink glow to clearly differentiated red tramlines, leaving behind a special kind of reminder -- sometimes lasting well into the next week -- to be shown to others, perhaps, to be admired.

Lynn Paula Russell -- a column fro Februs magazine reprinted in Painful Pleasures: The Erotic Art of Lynn Paula Russell

[Daisy]

"Why talk of disaster or beauty" by Natalya Gorbanevskaya (b. 1936), trans. Daniel Weissbort

Why talk of disaster or beauty
when the oblivious body, happy,
naked as the thief's upon the cross,
wants to be deceived.

Who is it weeps and cries over me like a crane
crossing the snow line,
where the winter wind, the icy wind,
chills the bright surface of a well.

And this transcendental merging of passions,
these clutching hands, this gasping breath,
are like bones breaking softly on the cross
and, at the stake, the crackle and the blaze.

[Ligeia]

That she loved me I should not have doubted; and I might have been easily aware that, in a bosom such as hers, love would have reigned no ordinary passion. But in death only, was I fully impressed with the strength of her affection. For long hours, detaining my hand, would she pour out before me the overflowing of a heart whose more than passionate devotion amounted to idolatry. How had I deserved to be so blessed by such confessions? --how had I deserved to be so cursed with the removal of my beloved in the hour of her making them, But upon this subject I cannot bear to dilate. Let me say only, that in Ligeia's more than womanly abandonment to a love, alas! all unmerited, all unworthily bestowed, I at length recognized the principle of her longing with so wildly earnest a desire for the life which was now fleeing so rapidly away. It is this wild longing --it is this eager vehemence of desire for life --but for life --that I have no power to portray --no utterance capable of expressing.

From Poe's "Ligeia"

[G. S. Carnivals]

“Intimacy, sheer intimacy!” said the man who lived in the wood next door.

Most of the same wood was later to provide the planks for the fence that divided my wood from his. But that was later, much later, after the story had been told. He had a wife, one who habitually wore large hats, some in the shape of things that were not hats, others somehow more like hats than proper hats – and her name was Mrs Worrals.

Mrs Worrals gave the lie to her husband’s momentous non-sequitur. She stripped herself near naked and often offered every single part of her body bar one for my exploration. Later, I built the fence.

D. F. Lewis - "Tree Panning"